Dan's 1976 MGB

I've been driving the car for almost 2 years now, and it's been running really well. Never did fix the steering wheel alignment or the front end, so still need to do those things. But have been mostly just enjoying driving it again..... Last time I drove it, it seems like the passenger's side front brake was acting up a bit, so I need to check that out - it may not have been grabbing, or was locked on, as when I braked, the car got all squirrely and I could smell some brake burning smell.... Will try and look at that this weekend.

Well, the B is back! I ended up sending it to Motorcar Garage in maple Shade, NJ, on August 10. Pete Cosmides, the owner, came and picked it up. After a couple of weeks there, with an adjusted carb, brand-new tires mounted and new front brakes rotors and hoses, it's back in action and running well! I went down to pick it up and drove it the 50+ miles home with no issue, other than a brief shower or two. Great to have it back in house and on the road.

Need to do a couple of things this fall/winter -

1) Straighten the steering wheel - it is a little off-center, probably from when I had removed the rack to replace an engine mount.

2) Front-end bushings - the suspension is pretty loose, so will put some new bushings in the front end.

3) Sloppy shifter - need to tighten up the shift lever a bit.

4) The car now idles so low, that it feels like it is going to die sometimes - but never really does. But I still want to jump it up a bit - right now, it's around 600 rpm and maybe move it up to 900 rpm.

But first, I'm going to drive it a lot this fall!

Dan

I am way past Plan B so....

I reinstalled the carb last week, and yesterday, got the car started. Ran kinda crappy. Let it warm up and was starting to try and adjust the carb, but noticed some leaking fuel. Shut it down quickly! Not a huge leak, but it appears to be coming from around the edge of the float chamber. Not the float chamber plug, but the edges. Bummer.

So, in lieu of continuing the spend time screwing around with it, the new plan is to have it towed to a good shop in South Jersey in the late winter and have them get it running again. They can tune it up and I can drive it some in the spring. I have reached the limits of my mechanical ability, and no amount of watching youtube videos is going to fix that!

So I will shift my focus back to the '65 B disassembly at this point.

Pretty much done with the 'rebuild' phase of this little project. Everything is disassembled and cleaned, ready to be put back together... Last night, I took apart the innards of the choke mechanism (probably a little more than I needed to, as I can't quite see how the rotating cam fits back) and cleaned the housing up. The assembly was sticking a bit when I opened it up - would not return all the way back - so I am hoping that that will be resolved now (assuming I get the cam back together properly...). A couple of pics follow....



Choke Assembly

















Parts Removed

















Piston

















Empty Casing

















Mating Surface Smoothed Out

I started taking apart the carb a couple of weeks ago. This is the much-maligned Zenith-Stromberg 175CD-2 carb that has actually been very reliable for me in the 23 years I've owned this car. But I figured, with the car not really running for about 4 years, it might be kind of gunked up with old gas and have dried out gaskets, so might as well clean it up before tuning the car.

I have it mostly disassembled now and cleaned, and I am very surprised at how little actual gunk is in there. Other than some discoloration, most of which cleaned up with carb cleaner, there was only a small chunk in the air chamber -


















I'm awaiting the arrival of some parts that I ordered a couple of weeks ago, and today I had to order another part - a plastic insulator for the auto choke, which was either cracked or cracked when I removed it....

Here is the starting point -
























And with the carb removed -























Various views of a now non-existent piece of automotive technology -
















































































































Here is the current status -

Finally got a few spare hours yesterday to replace the front pads in the B... Passenger's side had been grinding a bit when I was test-driving it. Job wasn't too hard, once you get into it. I figure it took me about an hour and a half in total, spread out over 4 hours (of course), as I had to make a Home Depot run in the middle to buy a clamp to compress the pistons. Some pictures follow -

The passenger's side was the one that was grinding a bit, the pads show that there was basically no friction material left on them....


































Old vs New...















Pads out, now need to compress the pistons...















New pads installed....















One side completed....















Driver's side weren't too bad....















Compressing the pistons....















Driver's side completed...















A little overzealous compressing the pistons....

I bought a float charger at Harbor Freight for less than $8! Pretty good deal, assuming it works! I have it hooked up through my work light for now, since I have no power close enough to the car for the cord to reach. I will probably run a power cord across the garage to the outlet on the wall next to the house.

Here is what it looks like hooked up -